Out of Heart and Home
by Zing-baby
Summary: After discovering Exaltation, Liam and Ryder are feeling homesick. Right now, the only thing that feels "familiar" is their connection to each other. This story details their first night together, and the start of hope when home was starting to feel lost. Shameless and simultaneous fluffy-smut. Rated M.


**This piece is purely void fulfillment. I was surprised by the lack of description here for Liam and Ryder's first time, since I find their relationship refreshingly and uniquely natural. Their start was so understated and subtle that even if you hadn't selected romance options up until this conversation in-game, his scene still seems believable. So here's some Liam/Ryder love.**

**I do not own Bioware, Mass Effect, or any of its affiliations or associations. I also do not make money by fangirling out about it.**

* * *

**Out of Heart and Home**

"I don't even know what that means."

Liam's sentence hung in the air and his eyes sank to the unfeeling _Tempest_ deck. Ryder's gaze traced his profile. Like a vagabond in a steel cage, he wilted, listless, defeated.

When they had met, he'd been so effortlessly optimistic. He'd smoothly flirted with her and death both as if they were old friends. Carefree, but a guy with heart.

Not a boy with a broken one. Far away and drifting further...

All at once Ryder realized Liam needed someone to reach out, and before she knew what she was doing, she did just that.

Her fingers clasped around his, and they both jolted a little at the sudden human contact. As if she snapped him back to their dimension, but the air still crackled and popped between.

His eyes darted to her lips, and as if scorched by the heat, the tip of her tongue restlessly wet them. Her seeking fingers trekked his arm and shoulder to caress and embrace the side of his neck, like magnets to the animal heat that lay flushed just underneath his skin. Then his chocolate stare was back on _her_, and she tumbled clumsily over the edge of a chasm they'd just opened. She'd barely leaned in, hardly started, when his mouth rushed to greet her.

Liam's taste chased away the tinged metallic she'd chewed into her cheek through the Exaltation facility. His hands roughly seized her for his own, and the soreness of their skirmishes gave way to sweeter aches.

His tongue fiercely pleaded for life and she responded in kind. She felt him move them, the bottom couch cushions hit her back, but his arms immediately enveloped her again, to hold her to him and keep her grounded. Her fingertips worshipped every inch of his bare torso as if each were the greatest gift of Heleus. When her weapon-calloused fingers brushed over his nipples she felt his breath shake against her lips and it sent her hair to tingle on end. Encouraging him, she lifted her hips, and he took the opportunity to explore and assault.

Agile hands laid siege to the hem of her pants, and under, to squeeze the globe of one of her rear cheeks. It pried a surprised and pleased gasp from her, and once her lips were torn from his, they had a mind of their own. She craned to press a wanton mouth to his throat. Under layers of smoke, medigel, gunfire, and sweat, he smelled like _home_. And like a child she suddenly wanted to run to it with all her might.

But the insistent grind of his groin right against her body awoke something in her much unlike adolescent wonder. She needed to feel human. She needed him to.

His hard and growing flesh pressed against her stomach so earnestly the room spun. She pressed back into the sincere heat, drawn to the one thing she could know she wanted.

"Liam..." She whispered his name so tenderly he wouldn't dare think she wanted him to stop. She just needed him to know it was all going to be okay...

She held him close as they squirmed together. His free hand sought the knot of hair at the back of her head and threaded through it as lips descended upon her neck anew. She damned him and celebrated his ministrations as yet another memory of something she left back in the Milky Way faded away in place of the here and now.

Ryder had privately suspected before that this might happen. But not like this. She'd expected Liam to be tentative, gentle... to ask along the way, to respect her boundaries and take his time...

But he blew past all expectations and suspicions. He claimed and drowned them both in a swelling storm. Clothes were haphazardly and even violently thrown away. In a vicious twist to discard her bottoms, Liam nearly tossed her off the couch with them. He caught her, and with a breathy laugh she hooked her freshly-freed legs around him for security.

Just in her underwear, she remembered for a moment where they were. But then his penetrative stare was on her again. His hands sloped her sides, his body leaned against her hips and thighs, and by the time his heavily-lashed lids fell back her navel, he had brought her back to him again.

Ryder curled and her dexterous digits worked at his belt and fly until both popped free. She hastily shoved dense cloth down over wriggling hips, and while she normally would have relished in mapping the specific shape and form of Liam, more than that she needed to feel him.

Her skin felt aflame as he pressed to her, his fingers toyed with the edge of her panties only a moment before he forced them aside.

She hissed in relief. If there was a time to explore and memorize and strip each other slowly, it was not now.

Something in his grip and his hold was like an anchor. She could feel the intensity.

They weren't _pursuing_ emotion. They were _working through_ it. And he needed to feel connected with someone. With her.

He lashed an arm around her, the other braced the base of her skull to keep her face so close to his their foreheads brushed. He held her there as he grunted and pushed through and past skin into warm, welcoming femininity.

She offered herself as a home, and barely contained her gaping moans as he pushed her open from inside. Without the teasing and playing of lengthy foreplay, the initial thrusts felt raw, but the friction was just what she needed.

"Shit, Ryder..." His brow scrunched against hers and their lips panted back and forth.

"Shh..." She rasped back and rolled herself with him. She didn't want either of them to think about it too much. Just... "Just chase it all away."

Liam relinquished a strangled groan in agreement and worked up a slow but sharp pace. Ryder had the sense of mind to stifle most of her natural sounds but she refused to be passive. She flexed with every muscle in her stomach down through her thighs to welcome him. Sometimes the sensation of his hard, relentless cock flexing inside her sent her head spinning, but every time her eyes fell shut he silently demanded her attention again; with a rough squeeze to the hip, breast, neck, or a sharp snap of his hips.

He kept them hot like a live wire; she wasn't allowed the safety of emotional distance. It was intimacy he needed, and that was very different.

It was never going to be the same and it was already too late. She got lost, not in sex and heat and fire but in _Liam_, and in one terrifying moment she realized what was happening.

With a cry of self-submission, Ryder shifted and made to change positions. Liam allowed it, but every moment his hands sought to tug her back and closer _with him_.

She guided him to sit and she eagerly straddled him as if craven. Now well-slicked from their work, this time when she sank her hot core over his swollen dick he slipped in even deeper against her.

A mangled growl ripped up Liam's throat and he threw his head back. His dark hands fell to her rolling hips and muscled thighs. His pleasure-contorted expression obscured his view of a briefly flashed smile before Ryder's mouth angled its way up his jaw to draw his lips back to hers. "Right here... stay with me.."

Liam's eyes widened once more at her words, and he straightened again. Both arms snaked back up around her waist and up her spine. He held her so tight she could barely move. But every motion together sent sparks throughout her whole body, and if they only ever moved a half-inch, it was always to be closer and deeper. They kissed messily, delirious.

Ryder couldn't remember the last time she felt so fullfilled. To feel so full, of joy, of exhilaration; this is what she had come to Andromeda for. To be at the beginning of something new, powerful, and soulfully moving. To not just be alive, but to be _a life_.

It sent an emotional crest through her body and all her nerves shuddered around Liam, whom only throbbed and groaned in response.

He bucked beneath her, he parted and split her and she wanted to consume him all. Every part of her coiled like a single index finger beckoning him closer inside.

A shift of her body and his at the same time suddenly had him jolting and brushing against her womb, and in a barely restrained cry she arched her back, thrust her chest upward and outward thoughtlessly...

And Liam bit. He dragged his teeth over her soft flesh, scraping, then sealed the shallow wound with a scorching open-mouthed kiss that left her breathless- not only because of the sensation, but because he had chosen to do so right over her heart. Just to left, in the gently-rounded flesh of her inner side-boob.

Intentional. Like he'd taken a bite of her heart for himself.

A vicious gush of fluid heat flushed Ryder's system and doused him within her with enough force to leave her lightheaded.

"Oh my god, Liam..." Ryder lost the last of everything. She disbelieved him, she disbelieved her own voice. Her body shimmered in taut preparation. "I'm gonna-"

The man didn't wait for her to finish her sentence, or even her thought. She felt herself spin as if thrown but his arms never left her. Soon she found herself trapped once more between him and sofa, her body felt like a foreign thing; just a shell for her nerves, and yet he exploited them all.

Liam fucked her roughly toward the summit, but his stern grip at the side of her neck and scalp, the other at her hip, kept her locked with him, locked in their exploding world. Her desperate fingers stretched and splayed over his lower stomach, to feel all the muscles inside race into her, and for the next ten seconds, Ryder couldn't remember her name, her birthplace, or her species.

The ungodly cacophony of slapping skin and tangled bodies thundered in her ears with her pulse and the world inverted. The last coherent thought she had was his name, even if she resisted yelling it, and her whole self exploded in orgasm.

Perhaps the hottest groan she'd ever heard tore itself from Liam's strained core and he burst within her. Liquid fire rushed her insides like an ocean wave, and it crashed over scorched sand in relief. It soothed and salved a burn she'd begun to feel since they met, and with it, all her regret and resentment over everything that had stood in their way.

Heavy breaths was all that remained. Liam dropped his forehead against her sternum as their bodies quaked. His wirey curls grazed over her skin and she brushed them back comfortingly. She wondered if he could hear her heart pounding...

Nothing was different. And yet everything had changed.

He still pet her, stroked her as their haze thinned. Words fell short, and Ryder finally closed her eyes and tried to keep the sensation of being no one in particular as long as possible.

But too soon, the floor rose to meet them. The ceiling crashed back down over them oppressively, the walls sloped inward. Incessant monitors bleeped outside the room, the engine thrummed, and somewhere out there, an entire civilization awaited its Pathfinder.

The fog finally lifted. Liam reluctantly and silently detached himself. Ryder managed to suppress any vocal reaction, but her body still whined from his absence.

Still, she slipped her legs off the couch, her toes to the hull, and her sensibilities back into place.

She moved carefully, slowly, in gathering her things. She didn't want him to think she was running.

Before, she had been afraid of speaking for fear of ruining their opportunity. Now she feared ruining their intimacy. If she said something too casual he'd think she didn't care, that it hadn't meant anything to her, and that far from true. But if she tried to talk about it now it would be to label something that seemed organic and magical, and she didn't want that either.

So instead, she mutely slipped into her clothes, and watched him retrieve his own from nearby and do the same. When she thought he wasn't looking she stole a peek at how his unfastened trousers sat low on his hips, open to frame his lower stomach as if just for her.

Only then did she finally feel a blush bloom under her cheeks. She hid it in the fabric of her shirt, reaching her hands over her head to pull it down. It snagged somewhere before a kind hand came to lend a tug, and her face popped free in a fluff of static-charged hair.

Liam gave a soft, short chuckle, then tenderly pat the locks back into place with careful fingers.

Briefly, Ryder thought he might kiss her again, as she stood there, now in the costume of an Initiative officer. His eyes did dart that way, but only a moment before he seemed to think better of it.

Still, while he gently smiled, more like himself now than he had been when she arrived, she knew, regardless of the silence that had taken place, that she would never see him the same way again.

She back-stepped slowly to the door and made to go, no thoughts or words arising that could help them get to the next part. So she just met his gaze, with a long, pleading look, and hoped he'd understand all the things going on behind her eyes.

Not least of which being that in his arms, she'd finally found a little piece of what she wanted to be her home.

* * *

**Please feed the smut-gremlins with reviews. They never seem satisfied until they know they've melted the CPU of some poor soul.**

**Loves!**


End file.
